The present invention relates to a telecommunication network and more particularly to a SONET-based digital subscriber loop carrier system that supports wideband and narrowband services.
Today, a telecommunication network must support a variety of narrowband and wideband services ranging from plain old telephone service (POTS), DS0, to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC), and personal communication networks (PCNs). Conventional digital subscriber loop carrier systems are known which can handle such services. However, the architecture of such conventional systems generally employ a piece-meal type arrangement wherein to support each service a specific piece of hardware is provided. In addition, while subscriber data is transferred on one set of buses, control data is transferred on another set of buses independently of the subscriber data, yielding even more hardware and expense. As a result, the system becomes very complicated which, in turn, makes the system unreliable and very difficult to maintain and to fix when problems occurs. Moreover, such complicated conventional systems are very expensive.